Nakamal At Home has been accused many times of mixing tudei kava into our noble kava kava and passing it off as 100% noble. This is simply not true. We have never knowingly mixed tudei kava into our supply.
Is it possible that tudei kava has gotten mixed into the supply and we were unaware? Of course it’s possible! It is virtually impossible to tell the difference between noble and tudei kava varieties once they are harvested and dried. The workers at our suppliers facilities do the best they can to separate out any tudei kava as it comes in for processing. Tudei kava is usually more fibrous and woody than noble kava for starters making it easier to spot when it is purchased “green”. Any tudei kava we have ever seen usually has a distinct pine smell that noble kavas do not seem to have.
Our supplier in Vanuatu, Forney Enterprises, has implemented a full blown laboratory to test kava thoroughly to insure their clients are getting what they ordered. Any tudei kava kava that may have gotten through in the past (which was honestly a very tiny amount) will be reduced to zero or near zero with their new lab.
Because we have been openly accused of selling tudei kava with no proof other than some sham colorimetric test results using acetone acquired at Home Depot it has caused a lot of inquires for tudei kava. We have decided to start a new product line that we call True Kava. It is 100% tudei kava from Vanuatu. So go ahead with your unscientific colorimetric acetone testing in your garage and you will find that yes the acetone turns colors when you soak this kava powder in it! We will send it Alkemist Labs and have independent 3rd party testing done to verify it by real scientists with PHD’s in a multi million dollar laboratory.
Here is a true and funny tudei kava kava story for you. When we decided to launch our True Kava line we contacted our Vanuatu supplier. We had to specifically request tudei kava as it is “illegal” in Vanuatu to knowingly export tudei kava otherwise. What they found was shocking. First of all tudei kava has become scarce. No one is planting it in Vanuatu any more. Secondly the price of tudei kava is now higher than noble kava, reassuring it’s scarcity with the law of supply and demand. So our supplier started buying tudei kava from a farmer to fill our order testing it to insure it was indeed tudei. After the first couple batches came back they were satisfied and continued purchasing to fill our order. They shipped the order to us.
We sent samples to Alkemist Labs and the results came back as noble kava! We contacted the supplier and because everything has batch numbers for full traceability it was determined that the tudei kava we bought was spiked with noble kava! Now think about this: If we are going to this much trouble to make sure our customers get pure tudei kava does it make any sense that we would knowingly mix tudei into noble kava especially when the price of tudei is higher than noble kava kava?
Lab test below from the first batch of True kava we had tested. It was high in kavain and dihydrokavain and not true tudei kava so we imported another batch. We stand behind what we sell here at Nakamal At Home and if we say kava is noble, it is noble. If we say it’s tudei then it’s tudei. We do not mix them together or mix them up.